FINALLY, after nine summer Olympic Games when he has woken to reporters' phone calls, attended early morning section-managers' meetings and stayed up late to check the sobriety of celebrating medallists, Australia's John Coates won't have to sleep in the athletes' village anymore.
Coates, perhaps the Olympics' longest serving active chef de mission, will check into the IOC's hotel for the London Olympics, passing the torch to champion oarsman Nick Green, who will take charge of the nation's athletes during competition. The announcement that the 41-year-old Green will succeed Coates as the person to lead our team at the opening ceremony was made yesterday at the MCG following an executive meeting of the AOC, which Coates will still chair.
"While I will relinquish chef de mission duties to Nick, I hope to be re-elected president of the AOC next May for a further term of four years," Coates said.
The sacred Alpheus River on the plain of Olympia will run backwards and Zeus will return to Earth to hurl thunderbolts the day Coates is deposed as AOC president, given the future fund he has bestowed Australia's Olympic sports and his sharp antenna for political rivals. But he will be 62 in London and there are important people to lobby if Australia is to preserve its reputation as the greatest little sports engine on earth. Staying awake for yet another three weeks in accommodation which will later be turned over to low-cost housing would make an amphetamine jumpy.
As Green, one of rowing's fabled "Oarsome Foursome", says, "You burn the candle at both ends at an Olympic Games. You run on adrenaline. That won't worry me."
So what will? Having to send an Alex Watson home, as Coates did in Seoul? Placating a women's eight at war with Sally Robbins, as occurred in Athens?
Managing Nick D'Arcy, even before the Beijing Games began?
"Yes, I'll have to deal with those things," the dual gold medallist from Barcelona and Atlanta said. "If I don't feel comfortable now with what is expected, I will as the job approaches. I can draw on a wealth of experience, a hundred years of Olympic knowledge, given the experience of men like Kevan Gosper, John Coates and Peter Montgomery."
Montgomery, Coates's long-term lieutenant and a former water polo Olympian, was expected to succeed his friend, with Green appointed assistant.
"'Monty' was the first to conclude we needed someone younger," Coates said. "Like any management team of a large organisation, you've got to be of an age appropriate to your staff and in this case, relevant to our athletes. It was a generous gesture by Monty and shows he is devoted to the Olympic movement."
Coates will still be responsible for the AOC's core business - fund-raising, marketing, management of youth programs and its summer and winter sports.
"I won't be living in the Olympic village," he said. "Nick will be chairing the morning meeting of section managers, the daily press conference and representing us at the daily meetings of team chefs.
"He will be responsible for preparing the athletes for London and leading the team itself. Maintaining morale and harmony will be very important. He has to make sure we have one team representing Australia and not 25 different sports."
Green has already accumulated an impressive CV. He is president of the Victorian Olympic Council, a member of the executive board of the AOC, a director of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and is employed as a group manager of acquisition and development with the Victoria Major Events Company.
Coates sees Green's chef post complementing his role of attracting major events to Victoria. "He will be going overseas representing the AOC and sitting at the table while other event organisers from around the world are sitting outside, hoping to meet with him and other Olympic delegates," Coates said.
Coates's Olympic career began as a 26-year-old section manager of the Australian rowing team at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He has been AOC president since 1991, a member of the IOC since 2001 and sits on the 2012 London Olympics co-ordination commission. A former cox, Coates has been watching Green's smooth stroking of his troubled waters for some time.
"I knew him as an outstanding athlete at Olympics and a number of world championships," Coates said. "He is a very wise head and not scared to make a decision."
While Coates is forever pragmatic, Green is still young enough to be idealistic. Asked whether there was a seminal moment when he decided he wanted to remain an Olympian forever, Green said: "It all culminated for me at the Sydney Olympics when I was carrying the IOC flag with past athletes such as Marjorie Jackson, Murray Rose, Michael Wenden.
"Here we were in front of 120,000 people and another four billion watching worldwide.
"I remember thinking, 'How bloody good is this Olympic movement? This is bloody fantastic and I want to surround myself with this for the rest of my life."'
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